State Rep. David Cullen (D-Milwaukee) just offered an RTA amendment that would require the funding raised in Milwaukee County to stay with the Milwaukee County Transit System for buses. The amendment would also require a binding referendum and the approval of the county executive and the County Board to take effect.
The full Assembly tabled his amendment. Cullen represents the district that includes Story Hill.
The finger-pointing between gubernatorial candidates Scott Walker and Tom Barrett over who is to blame for the problems with the Zoo Interchange would be laughable, if it did not draw attention away from the real issue — the state’s refusal to take care of the highways it builds.
The past few governors and the state legislature never figured that out — if you build a highway, you need to take care of it. They got the first part of that equation — highway building — down pretty good, but the taking care of it part? Not so much.
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation has been an agency run amuck for a long time now, enabled by Governors Thompson and McCallum and Doyle and the state legislators who perennially suck up to the road builders. Got an unnecessary interchange project in Waukesha County? The Wisconsin Department of Transportation is there for you. Want to build a sometimes interchange because of a single sporting event? Just call WisDOT.
But boring ol’ maintenance? Never mind.
The facts are rather neatly and depressingly laid out in the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s own Budget Trends report. From 1994 through 2009, spending on the three big highway-building programs — major highway development, state highway rehabilitation and southeastern Wisconsin highways rehabilitation — totaled $13.6 billion (transportation debt, most of which is incurred because of those programs, is a separate category). Spending on highway maintenance and operations totaled just $2.7 billion over that same period.
The top blue line is annual highway construction spending. The pink line is annual maintenance spending. Source: Transportation Budget Trends, 2008
Yup. In a state with an aging highway system, the state powers that be decided that only one dollar should be spent on maintenance for every five dollars spent on new construction. Worse, the spending disparity grew over that time period. In 1994 maintenance spending was about 25% of the amount spent on highway construction. In 2009, maintenance spending equaled about 19% of highway construction spending.
Republican Walker, when he was in the state legislature, cast some votes for those bad budgets. But this is a bipartisan issue. Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle rejected a request for a 1% annual highway maintenance budget increases for 2009-11.
State Reps. Robin Vos (R-Caledonia) and Scott Suder (R-Abbotsford) are leading the charge to make sure that Wisconsin residents who would benefit under health care reform don’t.
(Republican gubernatorial candidates Scott Walker and Mark Neumann also favor financial ruin caused by medical bills.)
Vos and Scuder sent a letter, which they said is signed by 32 other state legislators, asking State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen to take action to block the legislation in Wisconsin.
Suder comes up with an interesting read of the U.S. Constitution: “The 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution clearly grants the states the sovereignty needed to opt-out of federal laws such as this,” he said in a prepared statement.
Oh, really? The 10th Amendment says that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Where is that opt-out provision? Why hasn’t it been used before?
The scary possibility is, of course, is that the ideologues running the U.S. Supreme Court right now will endorse the Suders of the world and come up with a Constitutional interpretation worse than the one that gave corporations such a large financial say in the electoral process.
Van Hollen, meanwhile, is taking a cautious approach. Three conditions are necessary for his office to take action, the State Department of Justice said in a statement.
First, the President must sign the health care overhaul into law.
Second, Governor Doyle or either house of the state legislature must authorize
the Attorney General to bring or join such a legal action. Absent such
authorization, he is prevented from doing so by state law.
Third, should the Governor or either house of the legislature make such an
authorization, Attorney General Van Hollen must independently conclude that
claims have a sufficient legal basis.
Van Hollen’s staff are in contact with lawyers in other states interested in challenging the law, the statement said. Van Hollen doesn’t like a lot of what is in the law, but doesn’t sound like he will be first at the courthouse door:
The role of the state attorneys general and the courts is not to veto
those policy choices made by elected officials – that would be decidedly
undemocratic – but to appropriately examine, in the context of a case, whether
the law is consistent with the Constitution of the United States. Even if specific
provisions of the health care law are held to be unconstitutional, a court may
determine that the rest of this massive health care overhaul is constitutional and
remains in effect.
The attitude of County Cockroach Cultivator Scott Walker and County Board Chairman Lee Holloway toward a bill that would return 17-year-old offenders to the tender mercies of juvenile court is highly disturbing.
But then, so is the screw job the state, through that same bill, might visit upon counties.
State Rep. Fred Kessler introduced the bill this week, and Walker and Holloway were all over it on fiscal grounds.
County Executive Scott Walker and County Board Chairman Lee Holloway are
reiterating their opposition to a bill proposed in the State Legislature to return 17 year-old offenders to the jurisdiction of juvenile court. If enacted, this change could cost Milwaukee County at least $24 million.
“Counties cannot afford any more unfunded mandates from the state,” said Walker. “This mandate could cost local taxpayers more than $24 million each year. The new revenue streams they propose will not cover the cost, and our 2010 Milwaukee County budget does not have a provision to handle the additional costs associated with this legislation.”
“It’s time for the state to get serious about juvenile justice and fund any reforms to our current system. The State of Wisconsin should be financially responsible for any changes to current correctional policy, because our property tax payers already bear too much of a burden for under-funded state mandates. They simply can’t afford a $24-30 million increase in costs,” Chairman Holloway said.
There is something simply grotesque about arguing that children should be kept in adult prisons because counties can’t afford a better alternative. It’s an argument that should not have been made.
Walker and Holloway are totally right, though, in their contention that the potential $24 million cost shift to the county is unacceptable and the state, if it is going to move 17-year-olds from adult court to juvenile court, needs to pick up some of that cost.
It doesn’t compute that Kessler is seeking to return 17-year-olds to juvenile court, (which would reverse the 1996 law that sent them to adult court) to save the state some money.He’s just not that kind of guy. It does compute, though, that some of his legislative colleagues would do the math and come to the happy realization that they could make the state’s horrid budget situation just a bit better by making the county’s really, really horrid budget situation even worse.
The existing law needs to be changed. Counties need to be treated fairly when it is.
Wow. 4:10 a.m. and the Assembly is still in session
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010This kind of thing late-night / early morning law-making generally doesn’t turn out well.
There’s always an exception to the rule, right?
Here’s to RTA creation.
Posted in Commentary, State Government, State Legislature | 1 Comment »